Early E-Mails on Benghazi Show Internal Divisions

WASHINGTON — E-mails released by the White House on Wednesday revealed a fierce internal jostling over the government’s official talking points in the aftermath of last September’s attack in Benghazi, Libya, not only between the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency, but at the highest levels of the C.I.A.

The 100 pages of e-mails showed a disagreement between David H. Petraeus, then the director of the C.I.A., and his deputy, Michael J. Morell, over how much to disclose in the talking points, which were used by Susan E. Rice, the ambassador to the United Nations, in television appearances days after the attack.

Mr. Morell, administration officials said, deleted a reference in the draft version of the talking points to C.I.A. warnings of extremist threats in Libya, which State Department officials objected to because they feared it would reflect badly on them.

Mr. Morell, officials said, acted on his own and not in response to pressure from the State Department. But when the final draft of the talking points was sent to Mr. Petraeus, he dismissed them, saying “Frankly, I’d just as soon not use this,” adding that the heavily scrubbed account would not satisfy the House Democrat who had requested it.

“This is certainly not what Vice Chairman Ruppersberger was hoping to get,” Mr. Petraeus wrote, referring to Representative C. A. Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, which had asked Mr. Petraeus for talking points to use with reporters in discussing the attack on Benghazi.

The White House released the e-mails to reporters after Republicans seized on snippets of the correspondence that became public on Friday to suggest that President Obama’s national security staff had been complicit in trying to alter the talking points for political reasons.

While the e-mails portrayed White House officials as being sensitive to the concerns of the State Department, they suggest that Mr. Obama’s aides mostly mediated a bureaucratic tug of war between the State Department and the C.I.A. over how much to disclose — all under heavy time constraints because of the demands from Capitol Hill. The e-mails revealed no new details about the administration’s evolving account of the Sept. 11 attack, which killed four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.

“In recent days, these e-mails have been selectively and inaccurately read out to the media,” said a White House spokesman, Eric Schultz. By releasing them, he said, the White House had shown that the drafting process was “focused on providing the facts as we knew them, based on the best information available at the time and protecting an ongoing investigation.”

Still, the final version of the talking points is stripped of material — including a reference to Libya being awash with weapons and fighters that made it a dangerous environment — which critics say would have raised questions about the State Department’s security posture.

Republicans welcomed the release of the e-mails, saying they confirmed that the administration had airbrushed its account of the attack during an election campaign. They also said the e-mails belied the White House’s insistence that it had changed only one word in the talking points.

“The seemingly political nature of the State Department’s concerns raises questions about the motivations behind these changes and who at the State Department was seeking them,” said Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Speaker John A. Boehner.

In releasing the e-mails, the White House was hoping to show that intelligence officials, not political advisers, drove the debate over the talking points. It drew attention to a draft of the talking points — the only document provided by the White House that was not part of an e-mail chain — in which Mr. Morell, in his own writing, crossed out five lines that referred to C.I.A. warnings about the threat of attacks by Al Qaeda-linked extremists in Benghazi and eastern Libya.

But there is no other evidence in the e-mails that Mr. Morell himself objected to the inclusion of this material. In an e-mail to Mr. Petraeus accompanying the final version of the talking points, Mr. Morell referred to the State Department’s deep concerns about the references.

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The diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, after the attack last year that killed four Americans.CreditEsam Omran Al-Fetori/Reuters

The release of the e-mails offers a rare glimpse inside the White House five days after the attack as it struggled to piece together intelligence to formulate a public account of what happened.

The process began in earnest at 4:20 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 14, when Stephen W. Preston, the C.I.A. general counsel, sent an e-mail to other agency officials warning them not to disclose information that might interfere with the F.B.I.’s investigation.

At 6:20 p.m., the spokesman for the National Security Council at the time, Tommy Vietor, e-mailed to remind officials that Denis McDonough, then the deputy national security adviser and now the White House chief of staff, wanted to ensure that the edits were coordinated with the State Department.

At 6:41 p.m., Shawn Turner, the spokesman for the director of national intelligence, suggested saying that on Sept. 10, the C.I.A. had “notified” the American embassy in Cairo, not “warned” it, of social media reports calling for a demonstration and encouraging jihadists to break into the embassy.Mr. Morell later removed the entire reference.

At 7:16 p.m., Victoria Nuland, the State Department spokeswoman, weighed in with her initial concerns about ensuring that the talking points provided to lawmakers did not go further than what the administration was telling reporters.

Twenty-three minutes later, Ms. Nuland sent White House and intelligence officials an even more pointed e-mail, objecting that the talking points could be “abused” by lawmakers “to beat the State Department for not paying attention to agency warnings so why do we want to feed that either? Concerned ... ”

At 7:51 p.m., the F.B.I. offered only minor changes to the draft, the bureau’s only suggestions during the contentious process.

At 9:24 p.m., Ms. Nuland, reading the latest draft, complained in an e-mail, “These don’t resolve all my issues or those of my building leadership.”Ten minutes later, Benjamin J. Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser, offered his first comments, saying, “We need to resolve this in a way that respects all of the relevant equities, especially the investigation.”

In a report that set off the latest tempest over the talking points, ABC News reported incorrectly that Mr. Rhodes had emphasized the need to protect the State Department’s interests.

At 9:52 p.m., a C.I.A. spokesman e-mailed to other agency staff members a draft note intended for Mr. Petraeus, warning him that while the White House had quickly cleared the proposed talking points, the State Department had “major concerns.”

Mr. Obama’s national security deputies reviewed the talking points at a meeting the next day, Sept. 15, Mr. Rhodes said.

At 11:25 a.m., Mr. Rhodes changed a reference to the United States “consulate” in Benghazi to “diplomatic post.”

Over the next couple of hours, aides made small final changes and e-mailed a final version to lawmakers shortly after 3 p.m.

With time short before Ms. Rice began taping her appearances on Sunday morning news programs, the White House also supplied her aides with the final talking points.

Asked by one of Ms. Rice’s aides, “Is this the final language you want to use on Benghazi,” Mr. Rhodes replied with a single word: “Yup.”

Correction:May 17, 2013

An article on Thursday about the release of internal White House e-mails detailing the talking points for last September’s attack in Benghazi, Libya, misspelled the surname of the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency in some copies. He is Michael J. Morell, not Morrell.

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